so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local FM repeater but im not having much luck. i can hear people on it just fine but when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me or at least nobody responds. my HT is a baofeng uv-5r and i set the offset i think correctly, the repeater is on 146.940 so i set my radio to that frequency and there's a minus offset right? but the CTCSS thing is where i get confused.

the club website says the tone is 100.0 hz but i dont totally understand if i need to set that as my transmit tone, my receive tone, or both. i tried a few different settings and still nothing. also someone told me i should announce my callsign and wait a second after the beep or something? i dont want to be rude or step on anyone so i've kind of just been lurking on the frequency for a few days trying to figure out the etiquette before i jump in.

any help would be really appreciated, still trying to figure all this out

hey welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much about stepping on people — everybody was new once and most folks on repeaters are pretty patient with new hams figuring things out.

so the CTCSS tone — you only need to set it as your transmit tone, not receive. basically you're sending that 100hz subaudible tone along with your voice so the repeater knows to open up and rebroadcast you. if you set it on the receive side too your radio just won't open its squelch unless it hears that tone from the repeater, which some people do but its not necessary and can actually make you miss calls. so just set the T-CTCS on the baofeng to 100.0 and leave the R-CTCS alone or set it to OFF.

also yes the beep thing is real — most repeaters have a courtesy tone that beeps after someone finishes talking, and its good practice to wait for that before you start transmitting. just key up, say your callsign and maybe something like "listening" or whatever, then unkey and wait. someone will probably come back to you pretty quick once they hear a new call on there.

yeah what the other guy said about the transmit tone is right. i went through the exact same thing with my first baofeng lol, those menus are not exactly intuitive. one thing i'd add is double check your offset direction — 146.940 is in the 2m band and yeah it should be a negative offset of 600khz so your transmit frequency would be 146.340. if the offset is going the wrong direction the repeater just wont hear you at all regardless of the tone. some baofengs dont always set that automatically depending on how you entered the frequency.

honestly just try calling out once you get the settings sorted, worst case nobody answers and you try again later. the repeater crowd around here is usually pretty welcoming to new calls.